Tuesday, February 18, 2014

Transparency Helps Terrorists

But what has struck me is how seriously many media figures take [the claim that public scrutiny of the secret service "helps terrorists"]. In the vast majority of interviews I’ve done about NSA reporting, interviewers adopt a grave tone in their voice and trumpet the claims from U.S. officials that our reporting is helping the terrorists. They treat these claims as though they’re the by-product of some sort of careful, deliberative, unique assessment rather than what it is: the evidence-free tactics national security state officials reflexively invoke to discredit all national security journalism they dislike.